


Emo about vampires in 2019

by knifewingo



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 01:32:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18768463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knifewingo/pseuds/knifewingo





	1. Chapter 1

Gil found his shadow at the mouth of the emerald room's fire, stretching sharp to where he stood in the old, carved frame. It's snapping brandy licked over him as he lay - crumpled, a drafted letter never to be sent, a shivering silver leaf spider-silk clinging to its bare branched tree. Gil had never seen a vampire shiver. Not with fear, not with cold. Not with  _hurt._

 Panic spurred him, snatching tight the noose at his neck as he stumbled towards him and choked on his name. Erik barely moved. Barely breathed. Even as Gil scooped him into his scarred arms, touched his porcelain cheek and took his slender hand. Erik's wrist, birch kindling in Gil's coarse palms. A sapphire sliver moved beneath Erik's paper eyelid, his vitrified capillaries amber pale beneath his skin.

Had he wished for this, moons ago? Gil was no stranger to life's grim spectre - he saw it move through Erik now, long toothed and wild eyed, seeping into his bones like winter frost.  
"You're dying," Gil whispered. The words sat like hewn stone in his chest as he spoke them - he wasn't sure why, why Erik's trembling skeletal fragility inspired in him such dread - but there it was, stake-lodged, as his own flesh rushed to seal around it.  
Erik laughed very faintly - even pale and drawn Gil could see that glowing smile touch his dark eyes.  
"I do appreciate the sentiment but, I am a vampire. By definition, already dead." Weakness had worked to erode the softness from his voice but as yet had failed. Arid and hollow, an oilfire in a forgotten library - but still calm as midnight tide. Gil cradled his head, held him like a faun - though there was no vibrancy left in him, Erik's cold body draped against Gil's like an abandoned marionette. He wasn't sure exactly when his vision had begun to blur, when the brimming heat started to spill over his cheeks. He sucked in a breath like a lash and dragged his knuckles over his eyes.  
"What can I do?" He stammered - Erik hushed him softly, but he didn't hear. His heart beat a war drum in his skull and he didn't hear. "Tell me what to do. Please. Tell me-"  
Erik's fingertips iced his burning cheeks, his ocean eyes finding Gil's like a magnet. He wanted nothing more than to drown in them but grief had pierced his lungs, and now he could only gasp to stay afloat.  
"I want nothing from you. I'll be alright. This is enough," Erik murmured. Sorrow glimmered in his eyes, too, but still he smiled. Slow and drained, but enough to strike a match of tranquility to his melancholy. Somehow, it hurt Gil more. He let the promise nest its feathers in Gil's heart for a moment before biting a small spark of valour from his lip and adding, softer still: "you are enough."  
It split his soul as lightning does an ancient oak, a gush of ink flooding the chasm that had cracked in his chest. His mind was white as he curled forward and pressed his cracked lips to the soft parchment of Erik's. Gil's iron fingers drove through Erik's raven hair, memorising the shape of him, that he could again carve it from marble were he to fade to dust. But even in this moment of unthinking, that was unthinkable. He'd have given his hands to live this moment forever - Erik's sharp nose blunted against his cheek, those last embers of warmth still deep within him and desperate to be rekindled. For the first time in his life Gil forgot the weight of his burden and, if only for that moment, allowed himself just to live.  
"I would give you anything," Gil sobbed. Erik's arms slipped around his shoulders and he held him tight, with all of the strength he had. Lips to Gil's ear and their temples pressed together, Erik's voice sounded the call for Gil's own, personal rapture.  
"My love, you have given me everything."  
 


	2. Chapter 2

Gil’s hot breath lapped at the shallows of Erik’s lungs, furnace cracked his soft lips. The urgency in his vast, coarse palms, as he cradled Erik’s face. Chisel fingers on porcelain cheeks. Erik’s head dipped - out of shame, or fear - Gil barely cared. His mind raced with a thousand thoughts his tongue would never have been able to form. Erik’s brow cooled against his, anguish creased as finally, the crest wave of all of those feelings he’d fought against crashed against the rocks he had borne so long. Erik shivered beneath him, quieted whimpers through his locked teeth. To think of those azure eyes lit with tears was poison to his wounded heart - and through its bitter sting he found his voice again. Deep, soft, shaken, but more sure than any words he’d shared before.

“Thoughts of you have chased my waking mind even into dreams,” he murmured; quickly, so his own guilt and fear would not silence him. He felt its shadow cool on his back even now, chasing ten yards behind him. He would not let it catch him now. His other hand slipped into the silken fall of Erik’s hair as he ground their heads together, pushed his blunt nose into his cheek. “I have no strength left to resist this any longer. I must have you.”

“Please-” Erik breathed. Gil hadn’t heard him so fragile - his voice wavered on the finest knife edge. Any other second in his life and he’d instantly have fallen to silence and begged forgiveness - but he had taken a sledgehammer to brittle wall behind which he had locked these feelings, and now, his soul would not be silenced. Swift and hushed, though there was no one but himself and this man, without whom he had found, in the last hours, he could not be - to hear his broken confession; but not silenced. Gil gritted his teeth through unbidden tears, knotted his fingers with Erik’s curls.

“I would give my life to love you for just a minute. Each second I spend outside of your arms lasts a century. Please-” he begged. “Please free me from this.”

Erik knew - he must have known - that for that moment and each to follow, Gil’s heart beat in his hands alone.

As the shackles had fallen from Gil, did the iron tension melt from Erik now. Slowly, his arms closed around Gil’s anvil shoulders, nails tracing shivers over his tight neck. Slender fingertips soothed lines of tension from his skull - lifted hot salt from his reddened cheeks. Erik touched him with such delicate tenderness Gil would never have known to pray for. Through the raging inferno in his mind Gil realised - he had been born to love this man.

When he finally met Erik’s eyes they were swollen, gleaming, candlelight melted to moonlight on the ocean conjured within them. The hollow in his chest ached to be filled.

“Tell me what you need.” Erik asked, softly. His thumb followed the rough shadow over Gil’s jaw, stitched a delicate thread through his cracked lips. Gil’s breath faltered.

“I don’t know.” He stammered.


End file.
